Running Like Chickens With Their Heads Cut Off...

Hello all! What an eventful week it has been indeed—although nothing will top me thinking I might have had malaria and Lauren getting a tick sucking on her neck. I continue my work on the blog/website for Emmanuel in whatever spare time I have. It’s still not ready for the eyes of the world to see, but when it is, you’ll be the third to know. I was given the assignment of updating the actual website for Emmanuel since nothing has been written about the school and the “farm” section also needs a massive overhaul. I spent one afternoon this week taking pictures all around the farm and came across an interesting occurrence that apparently only happens once every few months. Emmanuel bought about 400 baby chicks to raise, get eggs from and then slaughter after a few months. This particular day was the day of the slaughtering—what a treat! They had quite a production line going by the time I arrived at 1:20pm. Two of the older boys were using a knife to cut the heads off while another boy held the chicken down by its feet and wings. Once the head was lobbed off, it was chucked into a 5-gallon bucket while the other boy ran over to the grass to hold the chicken down while its wings tried to flap and feet tried to run. Blood would squirt out until all the muscles relaxed at which point the boys would toss the chicken into a bucket where it awaited submersion into hot water. Wade’s dad (who is visiting for a few weeks from Alabama) was in charge of keeping 3 pots of water between 160-180 degrees by adding either fire or cold water depending if the temperature was too high or too low. Between that magic temperature range, the feathers would very easily to fall out. The chickens would then make their way into the slaughterhouse where they would be thrown into a type of “de-featherer.” One at a time, the chickens would be thrown into this whirlwind machine where most of the feathers would be knocked off the chicken. They were then taken to a table where a group of ladies from town would pluck out the remaining feathers, cut off the feet and gut out the gizzards. They were then bagged and put into the freezer. How lucky was I to witness all of that?!

After taking some pictures of the cows across the farm, I discovered that the orphanage sold 11 of them and will be buying some new milk cows. They need these new cows because the ones they have now are no good for milking, thus becoming a waste of time and money for the orphanage.

I also made a stop by the pig’s home near the cows. I was fortunate because I came around feeding time so they were all eager to be my friend and come close to me to take pictures. Lauren loves little piggies, so I was able to take a lot of picturesof the younger ones for her to see later. They are cute when they are small, but as soon as they get bigger they become very ugly. The big ones were standing up on their hind legs, using their gates to hold themselves up while they foamed at the mouth and squealed for food—it was a sad sight indeed…almost like something you would see at the McDonalds around the corner.

When I returned to the slaughterhouse, I saw that Wade had asked one of the boys to count all of the heads that were chucked into the bucket in order to get a better “head count” on the number of chickens that had been killed that day. The boy put the heads in piles of 50 on the ground…it sure made a great picture! One of the chickens was “no good” according to their standards so they threw it to the massive amounts of buzzards that were waiting on standby in case the tables of blood and guts was left abandoned. They certainly ripped it to shreds in very little time. I don’t think they liked that I was so close to them, but they still weren’t too shy when it came to eating.

After church we went to “la tienda” with most all the volunteers for lunch and had a nice little chat about all the things that have been happening around here with the volunteers. The staff has “re-introduced” the rules into the mix. We were not given any set ground rules when we arrived here, but they decided that we were doing things “wrong” (even though we didn’t

know we were doing them wrong). We would all hang out at the girl’s volunteer house since they have such a large living room, but apparently that is a no-no. No males are allowed there at any time even if they are accompanied by their wife. There are currently 4 married couples here serving as volunteers at Emmanuel. It makes things difficult since we all enjoy hanging out together. No one is very happy about the new/old rules that have been re-established. We would also have a bible study on Monday nights in the volunteer house where a staff member was present and led it, but that too is now not allowed; something else people were not happy about. Everyone spent lunch venting over it. When we got home Lauren thought that it would be a good idea to bake all of the volunteers cookies to make them feel a little better. I thought she had a good idea, so we baked them and then spent about 20 minutes walking around the orphanage to hand them out in little snack sized Ziploc bags. We purchased some chocolate chocolate chip cookies in town the other day and they proved quite useful today. We were saving them for a special occasion, and one presented itself to us.

We’re very much alive and eager to come home. Keep us in your prayers as we work through the last half of our trip. We’re looking forward to visitors from our church in less than two weeks! Abe, Rowe, and Cristin will be arriving two weeks from this past Friday and will be staying for four days. In the mean time we’ll continue our work in the school, on the orphanage blog and with the horses.